


make up for the silence

by theriveroflight



Series: From Under the Eiffel Tower: Spin the Record [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Akuma Attack, Angst, F/M, Past Character Death, Prompt Fill, Songfic, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/pseuds/theriveroflight
Summary: You only hold me up like this, cause you don't know who I really am...
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: From Under the Eiffel Tower: Spin the Record [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015888
Comments: 18
Kudos: 23
Collections: Miraculous: Spin The Record Challenge





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missnoodles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missnoodles/gifts).



> For noodles's prompt:
> 
> Overly complicated dark fic prompt for anyone looking for a challenge:  
> (warning for MCD but only kind of)
> 
> Marinette and Adrien are in love; Chat Noir and Ladybug are enemies. That’s how it had always been, right up until the day she faced Hawkmoth the final time. The day that Adrien died.
> 
> Months later, Ladybug suddenly finds herself fighting an akuma again - she’s been summoned into a world where Hawkmoth is still at large, and Ladybug and Chat Noir are partners. Overjoyed to see the boy she loves again, she immediately falls into his arms.
> 
> But she can’t trust him, not really. He could still betray her, like her Chat Noir did. She has to keep him on a tight leash.
> 
> And the other Marinette is stuck watching as an alternate version of her proceeds to sweep the boy of their dreams off his feet, and then slowly take control of his life - an easy task, when Adrien trusts Ladybug so completely.
> 
> Title from "Of All the Gin Joints in the World" by Fall Out Boy. Special thanks again to Khanofallorcs and Ginhwi for beta reading.

Admittedly, Ladybug  _ is  _ using the Rabbit Miraculous for her own gain — but selfishness, she deserves a little selfishness. She goes into the Burrow, and tries to hold the transformation as she trips over her own feet (her clumsiness  _ always  _ gets her) and stumbles out. The transformation collapses on her, leaving her as just Ladybug — not Bunnybug or whatever they would call her if they saw her. She grasps tightly onto the pocket watch, and Fluff just looks at her admonishingly.

“You forced it, didn’t you?” she accuses, pointing a finger at them.

“I did not want you to get stuck in the Burrow,” Fluff answers, absentminded as always. Ladybug wants to pull out her hair — but she won’t.

She takes a moment to get her bearings. She’s still in Paris, but it looks a little different. Something looks off. But she can’t quite tell what.

And then she hears her own voice, but she’s barely said a word since she stepped out of the Burrow. “Miraculous Ladybug!” And the Cure comes around.

Ladybug...Ladybug hopes that she won’t be flown back home. Wait. The other Ladybug is still fighting Hawk Moth?

Is this Ladybug even  _ Marinette? _

The possibility of her not being Ladybug — in  _ any  _ universe — scares her. She opens up her yo-yo. It  _ should  _ still be pulled up to the Ladyblog…

Alya’s still live streaming.

“Pound it!” The other Ladybug bumps Chat Noir’s fist. Her Miraculous beeps. “I gotta run, see you around?”

“ _ Cat _ -ch you later!” he answers, using his staff to vault up onto a roof to go in a different direction from her. 

Ladybug lets out a curse. This is what she wanted — Chat Noir,  _ Adrien,  _ alive — but he might not even be Adrien. He isn’t the same. 

“Fluff?”

“Who said that?!” Ladybug demands. It  _ sounds  _ like her voice, which is  _ unsettling  _ to hear, grating and higher than she remembers. But your voice always sounds lower to yourself, she suddenly remembers, so… 

She sees the other Ladybug approach her. “Fluff, I renounce you,” she whispers, so they didn’t have any eavesdroppers.

“What are you doing in Paris? Where’s Bunnix?”

She laughs. “Bunnix? She gave back her Miraculous after the battle, of course. Like every other Holder did. Not that Noir was alive to give me his.”

“...what are you  _ talking about?”  _ the other Ladybug asks. Her Miraculous beeps again.

“What was that cleansing for?” Ladybug challenges. She makes a calculation, looking at the spots on the other Ladybug’s earrings, and tackles her off the roof. They land on some trash, so not the worst possible landing. “If you’re still fighting Hawk Moth, then we need to keep your — our? — identity a secret.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” the other one asks. It’s a legitimate question.

Ladybug holds up the pocket watch in her hand. “You recognize this, right? And you saw Fluff.”

The Miraculous beeps for the final time, and Ladybug is met with her own visage. She sighs.

Tikki looks exhausted, but not tired enough to look at Ladybug with confusion.

She doesn’t detransform.

“Marinette,” Tikki asks, “what’s going on?”

“Time travel,” Ladybug briskly answers, before Marinette can.

So there are two Tikkis, two Ladybugs, two Miraculouses of Creation, two Marinettes. All because of time travel.

“Well, the clear solution here is to just use the Rabbit Miraculous to send you back,” Marinette says. “That’s just...obvious?”

“It won’t work. I don’t know which hole of the Burrow I came through, or which one I came out from.”

Marinette shakes her head. “This is why we’re not supposed to use the Rabbit. Neither of us are really qualified to manage  _ quantum mechanics.” _

“I should get away from you before I detransform, because I’ll have to go back again into the suit to dodge suspicion from two Marinettes existing.”

“Okay, this clearly isn’t working — how do we get you back to your timeline?”

“We wait for — or find — Bunnix and ask her to help us out?” Ladybug proposes.

“We both know who she is,” Marinette says, “or did you not have Timetagger in your timeline?”

“No, the first time I met Bunnix is when she took me to defeat Chat Blanc and save the universe. That was a few months before the final battle.”

“So wait, when did it happen?” Marinette asks.

“A week ago.”

“How did you defeat him, and how did you get the Miraculous? Did Miracle Queen happen, or…?”

“Who’s Miracle Queen? Fu passed it to me a few weeks ago, when Hawk Moth found him.”

“Hawk Moth found him without Chloe’s parents getting akumatized?”

“What?” Ladybug barks.

Marinette sighs. “There’s too many differences between our timelines.”

“Yeah. You seem to be pretty close to that kitty of yours.”

“He’s not my  _ pet,  _ he’s my  _ partner.” _

“Your partner, huh? How long are you going to believe that? How long are you going to let him tell you? How long is he going to be able to deal with all the pressure and the pain before he says enough and leaves you?” 

“You never went to New York, did you?” Marinette keeps her tone soft. Ladybug refuses to bristle, refuses to give Marinette any ground on those grudges.

“Oh, I’ve been. But Chat Noir was  _ never  _ a partner to me, not until the very end.” 

That seems to shake Marinette. Ladybug keeps her expression flat, refusing to let her satisfaction creep into her expression.

“What happened to him?” Marinette asks, in a shaky voice. “I-I…”

“He’s dead. In my timeline.” Ladybug can see the gears turning in Marinette’s head.

“You used Fluff to come back to find him in the past.”

“In my defense, I thought time was a straight line, but it’s more of a tree.”

“Fluff would say it’s a circle,” they both say in unison, and it’s…almost like bonding.

“Quantum mechanics are not my thing,” Ladybug admits. “But this is great. You’re  _ really busy,  _ right? And now you don’t have to miss class for akumas. I can take over the battles for you. I  _ am  _ Ladybug, I’m  _ you  _ too, and it’ll also throw off the people that might be looking to find out your identity. I know how you fight because I am you.”

“Can you work with Chat? If we’re going to do this, I need you to  _ promise  _ that you’ll never tell him that he’s worthless. Or take the ring away. If you do, our deal is  _ off.” _

“That’s fine. Just...don’t tell anyone that I exist.”

“Nobody needs to know. I can grab you food if you want, or spending money for that.”

“That would be...excellent. Thank you. So, I’ll fight your akuma battles for you, and in exchange you provide me with food and/or funds, keep the secret — and I will treat Chat like the partner he is to you.” Ladybug extends a hand.

“Deal.” Marinette shakes it.

Tikki looks vaguely worried. She doesn’t know why — Ladybug doesn’t have any pernicious intentions, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I used to waste my time dreaming of being alive, now I only waste my time dreaming of you..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: canon typical violence (akuma attack), gaslighting(?) [More info in endnotes]

Ladybug, as she expected, is first to land on the scene when she and Marinette put their deal into action for the first time. Ladybug isn’t watching, but she suspects from having been in that position before that Marinette is trying to resist the urge to jump out of her seat, stutter out a lame excuse, and become her version of Ladybug.

But Marinette will get her classes — and Ladybug will get what she needs.  _ Chat. _

She touches down on a roof and flips open her yo-yo, seeing that Chat is on the map. She starts swinging over to his location.

It feels  _ good  _ to be back in business. Even though she would appreciate not having to be.

“Hey, milady.” Oh. That’s...different. He never called her anything but ‘Ladybug’, at least not in her universe. “You know where the akuma is?”

“I thought you might have a clue,” she answers, “but we can always…”  _ Crash! _

“Well, I think we’ve found them,” Chat says, tone of voice light. He sounds the same way he did in her timeline, so he’s  _ probably  _ still Adrien, and his voice doesn’t...grate on her quite as much.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and such.

Ladybug, after all, has never been one for fondness.

“What’s the plan?”

The akuma reminds her a little bit of Stoneheart, but made of wood. Probably something something environmental preservation. Well, there are worse enemies to use to get back in the swing of things.

And then she catches a glimpse of purple  _ plastic. _

“The akuma’s on the chest!” she yells. “The badge!”

Chat nods, and extends his staff to swing at the akuma, who  _ roars  _ at him. They don’t grow bigger, though, so not  _ quite  _ Stoneheart. The akuma touches a wooden appendage to the ground where they tore the building down, and all at once plants burst out of the ground, arching towards the sky. It looks like a miniature park.

“Could use some good fortune right now!” Right. Akuma.

“Lucky Charm!” she says, the light forming...fertilizer? Fertilizer seems more like it would  _ hurt  _ than help…

Oh!

She rips a small hole in the bag. “Chat, over here!”

“What do you need?”

“I need you to get in the bag. I’ll throw it in her face, which will look massively stupid because it’s fertilizer, but you’ll be able to seize the badge.”

He uses his claws to cut himself a bigger hole, and then Ladybug throws the bag at the akuma with everything she has.

“Cataclysm!” she hears, muffled as the bag turns to dust around her, and then he manages to hit the pin hard enough for the plastic to break and a dark purple butterfly to come fluttering out.

“Time to de-evilize!” She captures the butterfly in her yo-yo as she swings. She lets out the butterfly without a word, just a wave.

Her partner seems a bit confused. Does Marinette normally  _ say  _ something here?

“Pound it,” they say in unison, performing the fistbump that she saw when she arrived.

“Ladybug, are you doing okay?”

“Go recharge,” she orders. “We can talk later.”

“I’ll meet you at the usual rendezvous, okay?”

“Sure.”

_ Where is the ‘usual rendezvous’? _ She texts Marinette via yo-yo.

_ oh don’t tell me you and ur chat didn’t have ur own meeting place _

_ No, we hated each other. _

_ what-- okay there’s no time, it’s the Eiffel Tower, up where the tourists can’t go, below observation deck but above ground _

_ Okay. _

Eiffel Tower, here she comes.

* * *

“Is something wrong? You seemed a little...off today. And you seemed surprised that I called you ‘milady’.”

“I…I’m still me. I just had a rough couple of days.” It’s not  _ precisely  _ a lie. Not to her.

“Oh. Okay.” Chat looks up at the sky. “What do you think is going to happen now?”

“I don’t know,” Ladybug answers, with absolute certainty. “But I do know what I want.”

More than anything, she wants  _ Chat.  _ And this is some weird universe where everything is foreign and different, but Ladybug is still Marinette and Chat Noir is probably still Adrien.

“And what is it that you want, milady?”

She zips off without answering, because it’s not the time to say that she wants him, more than anyone or anything.

* * *

Marinette waves to her as she zips off.

“How did it go with Chat?”

“It was fine.” She shrugs. “Are you two...together?”

Marinette blushes. “No, of course not! We’re friends now. He’s  _ really  _ trying to stick to that.”

Well, that’s a shame.

“You’re interested in someone else, then?”

“Yeah.” She  _ hopes  _ Marinette’s crush isn’t on Adrien. “It’s...complicated.”

“Why so?”

“There are just…a lot of possibilities, and I’m scared I’ll make the wrong choice.” Marinette sighs. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I shouldn’t be trusting  _ anyone  _ that treated Chat Noir as an enemy.”

“I wouldn’t trust me either.” Ladybug shrugs. “It’s complicated, and I wouldn’t want to share his identity without his consent, after all.”

“Well, I’ve been trying to move on from Adrien, but the world is against me on this one, I think. And my friends.”

“I’m sure there’s a reason.” Ladybug looks away from Marinette. She needs to push them  _ away  _ from each other. “But if it isn’t working for you, you can always do your best to avoid him, and just...as long as you aren’t thinking about him, it’s alright.”

“Yeah. I took out a lot of the things that I did for him. And there’s someone waiting in the wings, who wants me to choose him, but I don’t know if I’m ready to take that leap and go to him.”

“Take it. Don’t be afraid. Fear is the greatest barrier.”

“He deserves better than to be led on.”

“You  _ want  _ to move on, don’t you? Having a clear target will help that.”

“You sound a lot like Kagami,” Marinette comments. “How much changed between yours and mine?”

“Well, clearly a  _ lot,  _ since you haven’t defeated Hawk Moth. In my timeline…”

Marinette shakes her head. “I would not want to be in your timeline. But you still need to go back.”

“Have you found Bunnix yet?”

“No, I haven’t seen her yet. I’ve seen the younger version of her that will eventually  _ become  _ Bunnix, but not the adult Bunnix that has the experience. Fluff is in the box, I can always ask them about her, but I don’t know…there are two Fluffs now, who knows what sort of timeline shenanigans could come about?”

“No harm in asking civilian her. Tell me where she is.”

“She’s probably at the Louvre. Pink hair, roller skates, fairly noticeable.” Ladybug nods firmly.

“I’ll see you later.”

“You might want to watch the past battles, too!” Marinette calls behind her as Ladybug swings off.

To keep up the charade and get Chat back? She’ll have to be more convincing. 

* * *

She lands next to the pyramid, and yeah, there’s a girl rollerskating around with lopsided pink hair. Oh, wait, that’s...Alix. Alix has pink hair here?

“Ladybug?” she asks. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to speak with you. Rabbit business, come on.” She drags the other girl off and lifts her somewhere where there will be no spectators. 

“Rabbit—oh.”

“Do you know about time?” Ladybug demands. “I messed up, and I need to fix it.”

“What’d you mess up?”

“I’m not from here. In my universe you have blue hair for one.” Alix fingers her hair.

“Blue isn’t my color.”

“No, it isn’t, I like the pink better,” Ladybug answers dryly. 

“Why can’t you get back?”

“I used the power for selfish purposes. When that happens, normally, you get transformed back straight away, but Fluff didn’t want to strand me in the Burrow. I was...hurting. I was struggling, too, and I picked a hole and dove through it, and then the Rabbit let go.”

Alix bites her lip. “Why would you do that?”

“Why would I? The person I love most  _ died  _ where I am.” Ladybug holds back tears. “Wouldn’t you want to get that person back if you could?”

Alix shrugs. “You aren’t very convincing, fake Ladybug. Besides, I don’t really love people the same way I’m assuming that ‘the person you loved most’ refers to.”

Right. Alix is aromantic, that must have remained the same between the two timelines they’re in.

“But there should be a way to get you back, if you just do a little exploring. I’m sure Fluff would  _ let  _ you go back.”

“Do you have any way to make contact with your future self?”

Alix shrugs. “I assume she comes and goes as this timeline needs her. I’ll be there eventually, but not now.”

Ladybug sighs. “You can’t help me either.”

Alix shakes her head. “Not with an attitude like that, Ladybug. Are there two of you now?”

“I made a deal with the other one.”

“Getting her out of the way, huh?”

“You don’t know me, little rabbit. You don’t know anything about what I’ve done to get here.”  _ And you don’t know how much I don’t want to go back. _

“Oh, I knew there was something sinister about you. I should just march right up to the  _ real  _ Ladybug and tell her what’s going on.”

“I am just as legitimate of a Ladybug as she is. You aren’t even a holder yet. And you won’t be seeing the Ladybug you knew for a while.” Not if she can help it. “I don’t need to see you ever again, since you can’t help with the timeline issues, and so you are of no use to what’s going on.”

She zips off without bothering to hear whatever Alix has to say to her.

* * *

_ One more tip,  _ Marinette texts her over yo-yo.  _ we do patrols every saturday night, he’ll be expecting you _

Oh, that’s  _ perfect. _

_ Thank you for letting me know,  _ Ladybug replies,  _ I will be sure to be there then. _

It would be a great opportunity to know this version of Chat Noir. He was not too different from hers — aside from one key detail.

He didn’t work for the enemy, but against him. They could have been working together all this time, instead of enemies to the last minute.

But was it worth it to be in this sick  _ partnership  _ instead of having just defeated Hawk Moth already? There were more evils stretched out in front of her in her timeline, she knew, but at least she beat one. They still hadn’t gotten past Hawk Moth, and she wondered if the romantic hurdles were holding them back. After all, Ladybug knows Marinette is torn between moving on and sticking to loving Adrien (some things are always the same).

Chat Noir belongs to her. And she needs to keep Marinette away from Adrien, away from the truth. Because if the secrets collapse...she’ll never have Chat or Adrien again.

* * *

“Hey, Chat, I have something important that I want to tell you. I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will get at least two more sequels.
> 
> Note on content warning: Ladybug, the narrator, is not playing it straight to the reader. There's one scene in particular where she narrates the events differently from how they actually are when Ladybug is conversing with Alix.

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to subscribe to the SERIES, not this work. That way you can be informed of all the future works, not just the second chapter of this!
> 
> And join us on the [Miraculous Fanworks Discord server](https://discord.gg/mlfanworks) if you're interested in meeting a growing community of creators and Miraculous Ladybug fans - where we both hold informal challenges like this and more formal challenges like exchanges.
> 
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> alto-tenure / main Tumblr  
> beunforgotten / writing Tumblr  
> riverofliight / Twitter (inactive


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